Colonel Sanders Here with some big news

Introducing my new chicken blog: Chicken Chattin’ With The Colonel. That’s right, it may have taken me 126 years, but I’ve finally gotten the hang of this whole Internet thing.

Chicken Chattin’ With The Colonel is a place where I’m gonna chat about lots of things like: my fried chicken, life, and my fried chicken. So grab a bucket, put on your reading spectacles, and let’s get to Chicken Chattin’. Enjoy!

Latest Recent New Posts:

At KFC, you can always get 100% white-meat chicken. Meal deals, promotions, and signature flavors may come and go, but offering all-white-meat chicken is forever.

As you may have noticed, we love offering special promotions and limited-time-only meal options. But some KFC offerings never stop, namely our premium, tasty, delicious fried chicken with 100% white meat. Dark-meat fans are covered too, but we never stop serving up quality 100% white-meat chicken because we know it’s so popular. So you can get any of our meal deals—$5 Fill Ups, $20 Fill Ups, Tenders, Famous Bowls, Popcorn Chicken—with all-white meat. Fun meal deals and promotions will come and go, and Colonel knows we love concocting new ones, but quality all-white-meat chicken is here to stay. It’s as certain as death and taxes, only way crispier and more delicious.

You can get two Chicken Littles for only $3, AND you can get them in any of our signature Flavors of the South.

Breaking KFC News: You can now get two of KFC’s adorably delectable Chicken Littles® for only $3. AND you can get them in any of our three signature Flavors of the South: Nashville Hot, Georgia Gold, or Smoky Mountain BBQ. Can’t decide between a Nashville Hot and a Georgia Gold Chicken Little? Get both for $3! Your craving for Smoky Mountain BBQ versus Extra Crispy tearing you apart? Relax and enjoy both for only $3. Whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t realize $3 could buy a couple of these li’l buddies of flavor: delicious, crispy chicken tenders between a soft bun with mayonnaise and pickles and a signature KFC sauce. Sad.

What’s more, this offer is available at KFCs nationwide! So every American has the chance to enjoy any two Chicken Littles in a variety of flavors for only $3.

It’s me again, working hard to bring you the best chicken in the world!

Today, I’m here to enlighten you about a matter of profound gravity. Hunger can really weigh you down, and when it strikes, you better believe it’s serious business.

And that’s why we’re hoisting up our classic KFC Famous Bowl and the new Spicy Bowl—each a whole pound of food for just $3!

Think about it; it’s quite an offer AND we’re bringing you a new take on a classic! All the mouthwatering goodness of the original KFC Famous Bowl—our world-famous chicken, cheese, mashed potatoes, corn, and gravy—now with a fiery kick, courtesy of our spicy, smoky Nashville Hot sauce.

It’s substantial, folks.

So stop by your nearby KFC and lift up the classic Famous Bowl or new Spicy Bowl. Pound for pound, it’s a bargain that’s sure to leave you massively satisfied. And it’s finger lickin’ good™.

This hot and honeyed treat combines sweet and savory like nobody’s bees-ness (sorry, not sorry).

So how hot and honeyed is this new flavor offering? Just hot enough to dance across your taste buds with a honey sweetness that brings the flavor home, so you’re ready for the next bite. There’s no better complement to the Colonel’s 11 herbs & spices—well, not forgetting, of course, the vessel for all this goodness: crispy, tender chicken.

We’ll stop beating around the beehive—this new Hot Honey flavor is finger lickin’ and lip-smackin’ good. The perfect combination of sweetness and heatness, it’s a blend that goes bee-utifully in our Crispy Colonel Sandwich, Extra Crispy™ chicken, or tenders. Pro tip: pair it with a Dr Pepper and you’ll hit the sweet spot of flavor and refreshment.

But don’t delay, friends! Hot Honey is only available for a limited time, so eat hardy before it hibernates from the flavor lineup.

KFC’s new Double Crispy Colonel Sandwich is a delicious feat to eat.

It’s hard to improve on Crispy Colonel Sandwich perfection—so we doubled it! KFC’s new Double Crispy Colonel Sandwich features a double-breaded double filet of all-white-meat chicken breasts. We didn’t double the bun; that would be weird. But the result is…

And it’s a math fact that when you double something, it gets bigger, so the Double Crispy Colonel is BIG. It’s a lot of sandwich, so you’ll need two hands to handle it. And you might want to get a bigger mouth. Look, a little elbow grease never hurt anyone.

Get yourself to a KFC, because this big, big sandwich is available only as a limited-time offer. It’s double the finger lickin’ good, folks!

It takes an Extra Crispy Colonel to know a good Crispy Colonel sandwich.

Summertime is the best time of year to celebrate the Extra Crispy lifestyle, which is why we’re introducing another way to enjoy our classic Extra Crispy chicken: KFC’s new Crispy Colonel sandwich. And who better to announce the Crispy Colonel sandwich than the Extra Crispy Colonel himself, George Hamilton?

Our most bronzed Colonel appreciates fried chicken that’s juicy and tender on the inside and double-breaded and fried to crispy, crunchy perfection on the outside. The new Crispy Colonel sandwich is also available in a $5 Fill Up, which includes potato wedges, a cookie, and a drink.

So slap on a sunhat, slather on the SPF, and head to your nearest KFC for the Crispy Colonel sandwich, the tastiest way to live your best Extra Crispy life this summer.

Haunted by Thanksgiving memories of families torn asunder fighting over the coveted white-meat pieces? Get KFC’s new $5 Fill Up with all-white-meat chicken, and let the healing begin.

At KFC, we’re about quality, value, and variety—which is why we’re serving up yet another $5 Fill Up option: the two-piece breast and wing $5 Fill Up, featuring a juicy, all-white-meat breast and wing. And just like our Tenders, Famous Bowl, Chicken Breast, and Pot Pie $5 Fill Ups, the new two-piece white-meat Fill Up comes with a cookie and a drink—plus mashed potatoes and a biscuit. That’s a serious meal for the seriously good deal of $5.

So set your sights on those coveted white-meat pieces—they’re all yours! But they’re not yours forever. The two-piece breast and wing $5 Fill Up is only available from 3/19–4/22. So get to your nearest KFC soon to enjoy this limited-time offer.

O beautiful for different tastes . . . From sea to shining sea. In this big, beautiful country, there are great tastes of all different kinds. And we at KFC are proud to play a part in that incredible variety.

You already know about the KFC favorites that are available at each and every one of our locations: the Colonel’s famous Original Recipe fried chicken, our delicious mashed potatoes and gravy, and our warm, flaky biscuits—all prepared and served the way the Colonel would do it, the Hard Way.

But we know that many of you enjoy our regional items—the ones that go so well with our KFC favorites. We’re talking about specialty items like KFC Grilled Chicken, marinated and seasoned, then slow grilled to perfection. Kentucky Grilled Chicken can be found all across the US—but it’s more likely to be available at locations in the Southeast.

We’re also aware that you have a hankering for specialty items like gizzards and livers, but these more acquired tastes are only offered at select KFC locations—again, mostly in the Southeast.

So we listen to them before deciding what local favorites to feature. Even though this means some items won’t be available everywhere, we like that this gives each KFC restaurant a unique touch.

Corn on the cob? You’ll find that more in the Northwest. And you hot chocolate fans will find that East Coast KFC locations are more likely to have you covered in that department. Other specialty items that you may encounter include our delicious green beans, lemon cake, potato salad, and applesauce. But again, you won’t find these at every location.

Rest assured, no matter where you are, we’ll always offer the KFC favorites that everyone knows and loves—the Colonel’s famous fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy—and we’ll always prepare them the same way the Colonel did.

In true Colonel fashion, ensuring the highest-quality fried chicken starts with the chickens themselves, including how they’re raised and treated. This is why we’re committed to only sourcing our chickens from suppliers that adhere to established animal welfare practices.

You already know that KFC uses 100% real chicken and 0% mutant chickens, and that we’re committed to doing things the Hard Way. But our high standards for making Colonel-quality fried chicken also extend to how our chickens are raised and sourced. In fact, KFC’s parent company, Yum! Brands, established the Animal Welfare Advisory Council in 2003 to ensure that KFC chicken farms follow humane animal-handling practices.

So who are these suppliers? We source our chicken from 2,000 farms across the USA, many of which are family-owned small businesses. These KFC chicken farms are required to raise chickens humanely, in cage-free environments, based on the standards established with the Animal Welfare Advisory Council. The Council was also instrumental in developing a set of ethical sourcing principles that apply to all poultry, beef, and chicken suppliers in the US. These guiding principles focus on:

Animal treatment

Partnership with industry experts

Ongoing training and education

Performance quantification and supplier improvement

Communication with industry leaders

At KFC, we feel a quality end product begins with chickens that are treated well.

It’s late in the evening. With your stomach rumbling, you stop into the nearest KFC to get your chicken fix. You scan the menu, looking for the perfect crispy, crunchy bite that’ll satisfy your craving. You place your order and wah-wah. The restaurant is out of breast pieces. How can this be? KFC sells chicken. How can KFC run out of chicken?

With farm-fresh chicken this good, it’s hard to keep it in stock. So KFC ensures it doesn’t run out of chicken by scheduling deliveries of fresh chicken to each restaurant two to three times per week. Each piece is hand-breaded by a real person, in house—not in a factory miles away. Chicken is cooked in the Colonel’s patented pressure fryer and served up hot and juicy. This time-intensive process creates the best taste, perfect temperature, and absolute highest quality.

But once in a while, unexpected demand (such as a large same-day catering order) might result in chicken not being immediately available when you walk up to the counter. We take it as a compliment when our customers want this much chicken served up, although it could result in a temporary lack of product for other guests. As much as we hate the idea of delaying any customer’s experience of finger lickin’ goodness, it’s worth it to provide exceptional quality and freshness as we hand-prepare more.

And even though customer ordering patterns can be unpredictable, it would be rare for KFC to run out of chicken. Farm-fresh chicken is delivered multiple times a week to all KFC locations, and KFC cooks conduct product checks throughout the day to ensure there’s enough on hand. Using guest feedback surveys, each restaurant measures availability, with restaurant operators being accountable for the results. Weeks before you place your order, a computerized supply management system is already calculating how to keep a stream of fresh and crispy fried chicken flowing as smoothly as the Ohio River.

So if KFC runs out of chicken, it’s because our chicken is fresh and made to order. But with our high degree of oversight and care, KFC being short on freshly prepared chicken is about as rare as mashed potatoes without gravy.

Ever since humans have gazed at the stars, we have had one singular dream: to get a spicy chicken sandwich up there. Finally, KFC and World View are realizing that eternal human dream. KFC has the groundbreaking spicy chicken sandwich, the Zinger. World View has the groundbreaking technology, the Stratollite. Stratollites are amazing high-altitude balloons that can execute a variety of flight profiles, which gives them the ability to do all sorts of amazing things. Things, like, beyond putting spicy chicken into space. Read more about it below.

A world-shaking convergence of spaceflight and fried chicken history is upon us.

Ever since the beginning of history, humankind has looked skyward and dreamed of one day taking its place among the stars. The story of flight has taken us from Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop to the Wright brothers’ trials at Kitty Hawk, straight through to the dawn of the Space Age at Cape Canaveral. Those missions into space are the stuff of legends: Mercury. Gemini. Apollo. Skylab. The Space Shuttle. The International Space Station.

And now . . . Zinger 1.

KFC and World View are joining forces to embark on the greatest fried chicken adventure since Zinger 1 Mission Commander Colonel Harland Sanders founded KFC in 1930 and brought his Hard Way of making delicious fried chicken to the world.

KFC’s world-famous Zinger chicken sandwich will take flight aboard the longest controlled stratospheric balloon flight with a commercial payload in history. It will also be the first-ever multi-day mission of the World View Stratollite flight system.

“Folks who are coming along for the ride and are going to be watching it, they’re actually going to be seeing real aerospace engineering and, to some degree, spaceflight history in the making,” World View CEO Jane Poynter said.

Unlike other high-altitude balloons, Stratollites can execute an array of flight profiles—from circling the Earth to holding position over a specific location—and maintain a position over a desired area for days, weeks, and even months.

Nothing against rockets, but the Zinger launch will show the world there’s more than one way to get payloads to and from space. And what cargo is as precious as a hand-breaded, 100% chicken breast filet, served with crisp lettuce and the Colonel’s mayo on a toasted sesame-seed bun?

“We’re excited to be the ones pushing spicy, crispy chicken sandwich space travel forward,” said Kevin Hochman, KFC U.S. president. “But in all seriousness, we’re proud to support World View’s commitment to advancing space research and trust them to take our world-famous Zinger sandwich to space.”

Lifting the world’s most famous fried chicken sandwich into the stratosphere is a crowning feat in itself, but Stratollites have enormous as-yet unrealized potential. They could serve as stationary Wi-Fi hubs in remote or undeveloped areas that may not have existing internet access, or they could help monitor ongoing crisis situations from previously inaccessible vantage points. Future flights could be used for disaster preparedness and response—from weather predictions to monitoring disaster events to helping first responders with communications and surveying capabilities.

“The Stratollite was created to deliver meaningful access to space for all,” said Taber MacCallum, World View cofounder and chief technology officer. “This mission offers edge-of-space access to KFC, allowing them to embark upon a one-of-a-kind marketing experiment, while we get to pursue our maiden multi-day Stratollite shakedown cruise and open unprecedented access to the stratosphere. It’s a double win.”

With not even a sliver of exaggeration, I pronounce my Zinger chicken sandwich to be world famous. How could it not be? For years the Zinger has been celebrated all over the world, from India to France to other countries that won’t fit here in this small space. My freshly prepared chicken filet is double hand-breaded; fried to a golden-brown color; and served with lettuce and mayonnaise on a toasted bun. Delicious! And now it’s finally here in America! Wait a second. That’s where you are, isn’t it?

The world-famous Zinger is already on KFC menus in more than 120 countries. In fact, more Zingers are sold in the UK, India, and Australia than anywhere else in the world. And, boy, the Aussies are stoked about the KFC Zinger—to the tune of more than 22 million Zingers each year. That’s almost one spicy chicken sandwich for every person Down Under! Pretty amazing for a sandwich whose original version debuted at KFCs in Trinidad and Tobago in 1984.

Did we mention the Zinger is double-breaded by hand, freshly prepared, in-house? Not space-breaded on some faraway chicken planet or mind-breaded with some weird chicken telekinesis or robot-breaded on some assembly-line conveyor belt. Or any other cockamamie way a piece of chicken might be breaded.

No shortcuts, people. We’re not your run-of-the-mill “burger boys.” We’re obsessed with superior fried chicken. It’s why we can offer the ultimate fried chicken sandwich. It’s also why we took our time perfecting the Zinger before bringing it to America. We spent two years retraining our employees and upgrading our equipment in preparation for launching the Zinger in the Land of the Free on April 24.

Like all chicken at KFC, the Zinger sandwich stands out because we make it the Hard Way. Maybe we forgot to mention that every Zinger is freshly prepared, in-house, double-breaded by hand by trained cooks in every KFC kitchen. I guess we did say that already, but it’s a point worth driving home. And it’s why we’re sure you’ll go wild for the new spicy, crispy Zinger sandwich.

We believe in superior fried chicken, and that includes fried chicken sandwiches too.

Howdy, folks. At KFC, we want our food to reflect the values Colonel Sanders instilled in the first restaurant he opened 87 years ago: making quality fried chicken the Hard Way. In service to upholding this promise, we’ve vowed to only source chicken that is raised without antibiotics important to human medicine. Read more here to learn how we’re making this happen.

KFC menus in different countries offer a lot more than fried chicken. Like rice bowls in India and Singapore. Or the Chizza, a fried chicken pizza. Or the Colonel’s Christmas Burger. Or the Zinger sandwich. Rice bowls? Chicken pizza? What is going on in these countries? Delicious food, that’s what. Read more about it below.

From humble beginnings, Harland Sanders’ Original Recipe® fried chicken has become world famous. What started as one man selling fried chicken from a service station in Kentucky has grown into a global franchise with tens of thousands of restaurants. And perhaps much to the Colonel’s surprise, his face has become one of the most recognizable in the world.

One-quarter of KFC restaurants are located in the Unites States. The other 75% are located across the globe in over 100 countries and territories. Surely, this worldwide popularity must mean KFC restaurants have a formula: a tried-and-true menu consisting of only KFC classics.

But just as KFC expanded outside the United States, KFC’s menu expanded beyond the American version of fried chicken. KFC menus around the globe feature items unknown in the United States, as well as meals to meet the dietary restrictions and preferences of restaurant-goers in specific locales.

In countries as far flung as Australia, the UAE, and Canada, KFC customers can order soft-serve ice cream and enjoy blended, icy smoothie drinks called Krushers (flavors include Strawberry Lush, Kookies N Cream, and Chocopeanut Bolt). The KFC rice bowl is a staple on the KFC menu in India and Singapore, which features curry rice and spicy sambal.

In Japan, KFC is the place to be at Christmas. Although it’s not a national holiday there, many Japanese have adopted the custom of eating a Christmas chicken dinner, complete with cake and champagne. Anticipation of KFC’s Christmas menu is so great that preorders are taken in October, with the many who didn’t order ahead queuing up outside KFC restaurants on Christmas Eve.

KFC’s menu in the Middle East and North Africa is 100% halal, and KFC has tested sales of halal meat in many more outlets around the globe. In Israel, KFC replaced its milk-powder chicken coating with an identical kosher soy-powder coating, making all KFC restaurants in Israel kosher.

Special to the Philippines, the limited-time KFC Double Down Dog sandwich featured a hot dog covered in cheese and fitted into a bun-size piece of fried chicken. Now available in Singapore is the Chizza, a pizza with a fried chicken crust topped with tomato sauce, cheese, pepperoni, pineapple, and green peppers.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the newly-introduced-for-2016 Colonel’s Christmas Burger has an Original Recipe chicken breast, crispy hash brown, cheese, lettuce, cranberry sauce, and sage and onion stuffing mayonnaise on a sesame-seed bun.

One very popular item on KFC menus worldwide is the famous Zinger sandwich (aka the Zinger burger in a handful of countries). This spicy chicken sandwich has garnered a huge following all around the world. It’s never been available nationally in the United States, but the wait may soon be over—as the Zinger is being tested in the States! Americans may soon be able to experience the delicious sandwich and see for themselves what the hype is all about.

We’ve struck gold, folks. Not the precious metal, but a new precious recipe called Georgia Gold: a delicious honey mustard BBQ sauce that goes perfect on our famous fried chicken. This sweet and tangy triumph will be available soon at a KFC near you as tenders, bone-in chicken, or Chicken Littles®. And that’s what gold rush prospectors would call a bonanza.

Little-known fact: The second gold rush in the entire US of A occurred in Georgia in the late 1820s, more than a decade before the great California Gold Rush. Georgia is historically known for another type of gold: a golden, honey mustard–based BBQ tradition that’s as delicious as it is specific to the Peach State.

It’s so tasty and unique that KFC created its own take on the regional specialty: Georgia Gold Chicken, available in tenders, bone-in chicken, Chicken Littles®, and wings, with a sweet and tangy honey mustard sauce. This is KFC’s second new flavor after Nashville Hot Chicken—a hard act to follow—and it’s really pulling its weight.

Although the details of the Georgia Gold Rush are a bit unclear, it’s believed that by the 1830s most of the state’s gold had been mined and there was little left to discover. Fortunately, there’ll be no shortage of KFC’s Georgia Gold Chicken, but the rush to stake your claim on this bold, golden new flavor begins January 30. So get you and your gold pan over to a local KFC restaurant then to enjoy this little piece of Georgia. No mining required!

At long last, the thing you have been pining for is here. In keeping with Colonel tradition, a new limited-edition lathe-cut record.

KFC’s beloved Nashville Hot Chicken is back! And to commemorate its glorious return, we decided to cut an album, naturally.

But really, this isn’t as weird as it seems. One of Colonel Sanders’ many passions—alongside making chicken, selling chicken, and dressing in his Sunday best—was producing albums. In fact, the Colonel made six records in his lifetime, including Christmas Eve with Colonel Sanders, Christmas Day with Colonel Sanders, and, of course, Colonel Sanders’ Tijuana Picnic. So to honor the Colonel’s love of vinyl and celebrate Nashville Hot Chicken, we made a beautiful EP inspired by Nashville Hot’s signature spicy, smoky flavor.

KFC teamed up with Saturday Night Live alum and professional cool person Fred Armisen, who wrote and performed the album’s two tracks. “C-O-L-O-N-E-L” is the smoky track, inspired by Nashville Hot’s smoked paprika taste. And the dance-y “Nashville-Centric Boogie” represents Nashville Hot’s spicy cayenne kick.

The “spicy/smoky” theme extends to the album art, as well, created by esteemed artist Church of Type. In addition to sharing the Colonel’s birthplace of Corbin, Kentucky, Church of Type also likes doing things the Hard Way—the album’s art was created through authentic letterpressing, a process in which each letter and graphic is hand-carved and compiled to create the full design. So this album was lovingly hand-prepared, just like KFC chicken.

The KFC Nashville Hot album drops, as the kids say, on December 12, in a super-limited release. Find record store locations and listen here. Get it and Nashville Hot Chicken while they’re hot!

In this wacky, media-saturated world, the wildest rumors and myths have a funny way of taking advantage of our fears, hatching, and taking flight. One of the latest items to swarm its way onto the Internet is a video of maggots and fly eggs infesting a KFC meal. I want to swat down these nasty rumors of maggot-infested KFC chicken and make sure I don’t leave any wiggle room. Amazing I have to say this, but KFC chicken doesn’t contain maggots or fly eggs. That’s not the kind of grub we’re interested in at all.

You recently might have heard the buzz regarding a video posted on a local Arkansas police department’s Facebook page of a KFC meal containing fly eggs, which the next day supposedly turned into maggot-infested chicken.

Not pretty.

Also, it’s just not possible.

See, KFC follows strict food-safety and handling procedures and works closely with local and state health departments to ensure the safety of our food and health of our guests and to make sure any uninvited pests don’t show up.
In fact, immediately after KFC learned about the allegation, the health department conducted thorough investigations at the restaurant and found no evidence of temperature issues, pest issues, spoiled food, or any other issues of concern. And only a few days before this all went down, the health department had already made its regular inspection at the restaurant and found no problems.

And how’s this for science? Each piece of our bone-in chicken is inspected and hand-breaded in our kitchens by expertly trained cooks before being cooked to a temperature of 165°F or higher and hot-held at a temperature above 140°F. Those little guys couldn’t take it, even if they tried.

Because of the strict procedures followed by KFC and its parent company, Yum! Brands, KFC can confidently say that the contamination did not occur while the food was still inside the restaurant. All of our chicken is freshly delivered to each restaurant two to three times per week under sealed and KFC-approved temperature-monitor-controlled conditions. The team also conducts a food-safety checklist three times a day that includes looking at the temperature of the chicken and the time of its preparation. This is before cooking, and there are further procedures after the chicken is cooked. Each step of the way, KFC managers and cooks ensure that our chicken is up to the standards of Colonel Sanders himself.

After all, it all comes down to 100% real chicken made the Hard Way. When you enjoy KFC chicken, we guarantee that you’re getting delicious, crispy, flavorful, and juicy chicken and nothing else—every time. So next time you hear a tale about fly eggs in KFC chicken or maggots in KFC chicken, just tell ’em to buzz off.

Fresh chicken makes the best fried chicken, so that’s what we use. A few of the steps to ensure the highest quality fresh chicken include having it delivered from US farms, and always inspecting each individual piece. You can read more about how we ensure freshness below.

In our efforts to convince folks that KFC doesn’t use mutant chickens, that we work hard to ensure our chicken-making process upholds the Colonel’s original standards, and that our chicken is free of added hormones or steroids (in accordance with federal regulations), it would be easy to assume that everyone knows our world-famous fried chicken on the bone is also fresh. But we don’t want to overlook any of your chicken-eatin’ questions! You see, we like to do things the Hard Way, which applies to everything—from debunking KFC myths to wearing white woolen suits no matter the temperature.How fresh is KFC chicken, you ask? This fresh:

Our restaurants receive two to three deliveries of fresh chicken on the bone per week – no more than 5% frozen annually if needed for emergency supply availability.

Our chicken comes from US farms and has to pass over 30 quality checks and USDA inspection before being delivered to our restaurants.

Every day, our cooks inspect each individual piece of chicken before following an extensive, multistep process that includes hand-breading it in the Colonel’s secret blend of 11 herbs and spices and pressure cooking it at a low temperature to create chicken that is crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.

Making the Colonel’s chicken requires working with the best ingredients, and fresh chicken is the foundation of that process. So yes, KFC is as fresh as it is finger lickin’ good.

Colonel Sanders was a real living person who invented KFC. The real Colonel was larger than life, and has recently been played by several super-famous actors, which is why it can be hard to believe he existed. Well you better believe it pal, because he existed and he was awesome. Read all about his adventures below.

During his tenure as KFC proprietor and founder, and world’s greatest chicken salesman, Colonel Sanders was a regular household name, appearing in commercials, recording albums with his mandolin band, and generally being a national treasure. But in the years following his death in 1980, younger folks only saw the Colonel’s illustrated face on KFC buckets and restaurants. To a newer generation of fried chicken lovers, the Colonel was considered a mascot and a symbol of KFC, and not a real person who actually wore a white woolen suit and string tie every day. Today, when you start typing “is Colonel” into a Google search bar, “is Colonel Sanders real?” is the second suggested phrase that pops up, right after “is Colonel Sanders related to Bernie Sanders?” (The answer to that one is no.) Considering the extraordinary life Colonel Sanders lived, it’s no surprise that his persona could take on a mythical, fairy-tale quality. But like our chicken, Colonel Sanders was 100% real and 100% awesome.

Here are the details of his amazing life:

Colonel Harland David Sanders was born September 9, 1890, in Henryville, Indiana.

He quit school in the sixth grade to earn money for his mother, brother, and sister after his father died.

In 1906, at 16 years old, he lied about his age so he could enlist in the army.

He started working for the railways in 1907, first as a blacksmith and then as a fireman.

From 1920 to 1930, Sanders started a ferryboat company, worked as an insurance salesman, a lighting salesman, a lawyer, a tire salesman, an obstetrician, and a secretary at the Chamber of Commerce in Indiana.

In 1930, he opened a service station and added fried chicken to the menu.

Governor Ruby Laffoon loved Sanders’ chicken so much that he made Sanders a Kentucky Colonel.

The Colonel didn’t begin franchising his restaurant until 1955, when he was 65 years old.

After selling the franchise in 1964, Colonel Sanders remained the company’s symbol. He visited KFC restaurants into his later years, inspecting the quality of the food and sometimes tossing gravy on the floor if it didn’t meet his high standards.

Sanders was diagnosed with acute leukemia in June 1980 and died of pneumonia in Louisville, Kentucky, on December 16, 1980 at the age of 90.

The Colonel remained active until the month before his death, appearing before crowds in his signature white woolen suit and string tie, which he was also buried in. His body was laid in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort. More than 1,000 people attended the beloved Colonel’s funeral.

Whew. So, was Colonel Sanders real? You bet. As you can see, his life was too unusual and fascinating to be fiction. The Colonel was a real, self-made man whose success symbolizes the promise of the American Dream. Though no longer with us, the Colonel’s very real spirit lives on in anyone who values hard work, grit, self-determination, and delicious fried chicken made the Hard Way.

There is a wild myth that KFC uses “spider chickens”—chickens that have been genetically modified to have 8 legs and 6 wings. I can’t believe I have to say this, but here we are, Americans: spider chickens are not real. Furthermore, KFC never uses GMO chickens of any kind. You can read more crazy stuff about spider chickens below.

Of all the wacky Internet myths that have circulated about KFC, this one was outlandish enough to be almost entertaining.

You might want to sit down for this.

A handful of companies spread the disinformation that KFC used genetically modified (GMO) chickens that had eight legs and six wings, a Frankenstein-ed monster of a chicken that would give us maximum output and more bang for the cluck. There was not an ounce of truth to this. This imaginary KFC GMO creature was referred to as a “spider chicken,” due to its arachnoid surplus of legs. The modern art of graphic design made it possible for those spreading the rumor to create an image of what this bird might look like, an image that would give the surrealist painters a run for their money.

We might have had a good chuckle over all this, except for the fact that it gave some of our customers pause and made them wonder what the truth was. Our job is to provide a delicious and high-quality product, and that means KFC sources 100% real chicken—of the absolutely non-GMO variety—from trusted US farms. The same as you would buy from your grocery store. Then, using the Colonel’s time-honored recipe, we fry it up and serve it fresh in our restaurants.

We take our job of making the world’s best fried chicken very seriously. So seriously that this case went to court, where the rumors were thoroughly debunked and shown to be as false as they were silly. As with all chicken sold in the US, KFC chickens are bred using age-old breeding techniques to produce healthy chickens and the high-quality products our customers expect. Eight-legged chickens are the stuff of nightmares and sci-fi movies, not our delicious home-style meals.

A social post supposedly depicting a fried rat being served to a KFC customer made the rounds a little while back. It should surprise no one to hear that was entirely made up and untrue. I know, I know, something fake on the Internet—stop the presses. You can read more about how it never really happened below.

You don’t build a legacy like KFC has over 75 years without having some outlandish rumors created about you. Just ask Walt Disney’s cryogenically frozen head! KFC has endured a few similarly absurd myths, including the Great KFC Mutant Chicken Myth and claims that KFC chickens have added hormones and steroids to make them bigger. Then there was the 2015 KFC fried rat hoax, in which a customer posted an image on Facebook of KFC chicken supposedly in the shape of a rat, implying that KFC had served him a deep-fried rat instead of a chicken tender. Approximately 22,000 people shared this image. This was followed by a video post that 9,000 people shared on their Facebook walls, garnering over 1 million views. Even reputable news sources throughout the world picked up the story! Because if it’s on the Internet, it must be true, right?

Of course this claim is false and just plain nonsense. We’re dedicated to quality and preparing chicken the Hard Way, which is Colonel Sanders’ time-honored approach to making delicious chicken. First, we source our chickens from American farms. Then our chickens are inspected by the USDA and must pass 30 quality checks before they can even be delivered to our kitchens. In fact, KFC and its parent company, Yum! Brands, maintain industry-leading food safety programs, striving to have the safest, highest-quality food supply and preparation in the business. Finally, our cooks freshly prepare fried chicken every day, in restaurant, following an extensive multistep process, which includes hand-breading each individual piece.

Ultimately, like other rumors that preceded it, the KFC fried-rat story was roundly debunked. We even handed the alleged fried rat over to an independent lab for testing, which confirmed that it was, indeed, 100% KFC chicken tender, and not a fried rat. This was no surprise to us—we always serve 100% real chicken made the Hard Way. So when you order KFC chicken, we guarantee that you’re getting delicious, crispy, flavorful, and juicy chicken—and nothing else.

One of the biggest trade secrets in the world is my 11 herbs & spices for my Original Recipe chicken. There is simply no way I am going to let it fall into the hands of my lazy imitators, so I have taken a lot of intense precautions to ensure it never does. You can read the specifics of how you will never be able to steal it below.

What is it about KFC Original Recipe chicken that makes you lick your fingers, smack your lips, and reach for the next piece? Well, it’s the crisp skin and juicy meat in every bite created by the once-patented pressure-frying process, as well as the Colonel’s secret blend of 11 herbs and spices.

Colonel Sanders’ Original Recipe® is a cornerstone of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and it ranks among America’s most valuable trade secrets. It’s so valuable that KFC recently built a brand-new, high-tech home for the Colonel’s handwritten Original Recipe from 1940. It’s stored in a digital safe that weighs more than 770 pounds and is encased in two feet of concrete with a 24-hour video and motion-detection surveillance system.

And the secret blend of KFC’s 11 herbs and spices is so secret that not even the company that produces the blend knows the exact formulation. The spice blend is shipped from different locations in the United States before the final blending. We’ve got to keep it a secret from those imitators creating KFC copycat recipes that just don’t come close to the real deal.

Now, that’s not the easy way to season your chicken. In fact, it’s the Hard Way. But we believe in hard work, attention to detail, and going the extra mile.

Modern myths are weird. One of them says that we changed our name to KFC because we couldn’t use the word “chicken” anymore. Absurd. Chicken, chicken, chicken. See? We are still called Kentucky Fried Chicken; we started using KFC ’cause it was fewer syllables. Continue reading below to have this myth further dispelled.

In 1991, Kentucky Fried Chicken decided on a name change to KFC. Why, after 39 successful years, would a world-famous restaurant chain change its name?

Maybe because KFC is just easier to say with your mouth full. Or maybe KFC fits better on signs. In reality, we wanted to let our customers know that we had more for them to enjoy than just fried chicken, and many were already calling us KFC, as it was much easier to say.

Truth is, we didn’t do a great job at explaining the KFC name change, which left the door open for folks to get creative with the reason. And boy did they! Shortly after the name change, an email chain letter—it was 1991, remember—began to spread the rumor that Kentucky Fried Chicken used genetically modified chickens and was forced to remove the word “chicken” from its name.

We can put those rumors to rest. We’ve always used 100% real chicken. Our chickens come from American family farms—the same farms that supply the brands you would buy at any grocery store—and are raised without artificial hormones or steroids, which is a federal regulation.

So let’s get straight to the point: Can KFC say “chicken”? We’re still Kentucky Fried Chicken®, registered trademark and all. We continue to show our pride in fried and follow the Colonel’s high standards for frying chicken, even after 75 years. Not only can KFC definitely say “chicken,” KFC means the world’s best fried chicken.

You don’t need to be a Colonel to know that making great fried chicken starts with great chickens. And I’m very particular about our chickens, ensuring they don’t get treated with artificial hormones or steroids. You can read more about it below.

There’s a common misconception that chicken restaurants like KFC are trying to raise larger chickens to make more profit. This notion surely fed into the Great KFC Mutant Chicken Myth—the Internet hoax that claimed that KFC used “mutant chickens”—as well as false claims that KFC bulks up chickens with added hormones and steroids. This couldn’t be further from the truth since KFC actually pays a premium price per pound for smaller chickens than you’ll find in your local grocery store because we believe they are far more tender and flavorful. Furthermore, FDA regulations prohibit adding hormones and steroids to all poultry in the United States, and KFC chickens are USDA inspected for quality before they’re delivered to our kitchens.

So the answer to the question, “Does KFC use artificial hormones or steroids?” is a resounding no! At Kentucky Fried Chicken you won’t find any artificial steroids or hormones in our chicken. In fact, less than 10% of chickens meet the high standards for KFC poultry. Our chickens are raised humanely on US farms overseen by respected and established poultry producers like Tyson Foods, Inc. In addition, our chickens must pass 30 KFC quality checks between US farms and your dinner table.

Unlike with chicken buckets and American flags, bigger doesn’t always equal better, which is why you can rest assured that KFC serves 100% real chicken, free of added hormones and steroids—Colonel Quality Guaranteed.

KFC Embarks on Re-Colonelization Effort

I founded Kentucky Fried Chicken because I love fried chicken made the Hard Way, which is the best way. Unfortunately, things have gotten a little out of hand lately, so I decided to come back and set things straight. That’s the short way to put it. Keep on reading if you want the long version.

At Kentucky Fried Chicken, many of our customers say things haven’t been the same since the Colonel passed, and they’re right—but today marks the end of that. In 1971, a decline in customer satisfaction led to Colonel Sanders realigning the entire organization with the values on which he originally founded Kentucky Fried Chicken. This “Re-Colonelization” effort got KFC back on track, but over the years, our faithfulness to the Colonel’s rigorous process for making quality fried chicken has waned. So we’ve brought him back for another Re-Colonelization to ensure we live up to his high standards that put KFC on the map.

In addition to maintaining the Colonel’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices, Re-Colonelization means that every restaurant returns to the Colonel’s once-patented process for making his Original Recipe chicken, which continues to include pressure frying, as opposed to the more commonly used open frying method. The result is the uniquely flavorful, juicy fried chicken that is familiar to longtime KFC fans.

Re-Colonelization extends to the look of our restaurants, as well. Seventy percent of our 4,000+ restaurants will be revamped and refreshed by 2017. The new design is inspired by the Colonel’s original restaurant opened in 1952, so the look is a modern take on a classic café style with bold, clean lines and the Colonel’s face and legacy prominently displayed. These revitalized KFCs will also feature chalkboards that will be updated daily with the name of the farm that raised the chicken for the day’s meal.

Over the past six months, we’ve invested 100,000 hours in retraining our employees—a veritable Kentucky Fried continuing education. We’ve held 43 Re-Colonelization training events across the country in an effort to retrain every single KFC employee in cooking chicken the Colonel’s patented way—with 27 steps in more than 25 minutes. These team members, a number of them now deemed “Lieutenant Colonel Cooks,” returned to their restaurants to retrain all their staff. More than 20,000 KFC employees have now been retrained in making Kentucky Fried Chicken the Colonel’s way. The result is a return to the unique cooking process that made the Colonel so proud and KFC so famous. To everyone who grew up with KFC and has turned away in recent years, we invite you back to try the delicious chicken you remember.

Nothing makes me madder than a bunch of unfounded rumors about where KFC chickens come from. So… short answer: all KFC chickens are born and raised right here in the USA. Long answer: read below.

The Internet is good for lots of things: cat videos, questionable medical diagnoses, and wildly imaginative urban legends, including the KFC mutant chicken myth. This myth has been perpetuated over several decades by a widely circulated email hoax. The hoax claimed that Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC because it was forced to eliminate the word “chicken” from its brand name—purportedly because KFC meat came from “mutant chickens” with extra legs and no beaks.

We can set the record straight: no mutated or genetically engineered chickens are involved in making our delicious KFC chicken. Just 100% real chicken from US farms, which have to pass over 30 quality checks and USDA inspection before being hand-prepared by one of our cooks. Ultimately, less than 10% of chickens meet KFC’s high standards for quality, which includes no artificial hormones or steroids—a federal regulation.

As with all chicken sold in the United States, KFC chickens are bred using age-old techniques to produce healthy birds and the high-quality products that our customers expect. They’re also raised humanely in a cage-free environment on trusted American family farms—the same that supply your local supermarket—based on standards established in consultation with our Animal Welfare Advisory Council. In addition, KFC chicken farms must adhere to parent company Yum! Brands’ Supplier Code of Conduct, which helps maintain the ethical sourcing and supply of our food.

So let’s put the Great KFC Mutant Chicken Myth to rest, shall we? Though urban legends about mutated KFC meat are good for a laugh, on a KFC chicken farm, the chicken is 100% real—just like the Colonel’s time-honored secret recipe.